photos by Tim Griffin

Handsome Furs @ the Mohawk

For their part, the Furs are eager to keep returning to places where few other Western bands ever venture, to maintain the friendships they've forged and the fanbases they've built. The tours sharpen the couple's perspective on their art, their politics, and the Handsome Furs' existence itself. Says Boeckner, "Instead of going into this band being like 'We're against this! We're against that!', it's, 'We're against these things, but we also feel happy and positive that we're able to make music.'" [National Post]

The Handsome Furs are currently on a massive tour that hit Bowery Ballroom back on 8/18, and visited Austin, Texas for two shows yesterday (8/26). The first one happened inside Waterloo Records. The second was last night at Mohawk. We have pictures from both in this post.

And though we don't know the venue yet, we do know that Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry will be back in NYC in October for CMJ UPDATE: Handsome Furs are not actually coming to CMJ anymore. All tour dates and more Austin pictures below...

Continue reading "Handsome Furs played the Mohawk & Waterloo Records (pics), keep on touring (dates)"

photos by Toby Tenenbaum

Handsome Furs & recent Sub Pop-signee Thee Satisfaction played a show at Bowery Ballroom in NYC last night (8/18), part of a long ongoing tour for the lovebird headliners. More pictures from the show below...

Continue reading "Handsome Furs & Thee Satisfaction played Bowery Ballroom (pics)"

photos by Tim Griffin

Handsome Furs @ The Great Escape

Speaking of Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs revealed the NSFW album art for their third album Sound Kapital (below) which comes out June 28 via Sub Pop. They've also made another song from the album available in exchange for your email address. Check out "Repatriated" below, and "What About Us" here.

Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry recently got back from a trip to Brighton, England where they played the M For Montrea/BrooklynVegan Great Escape showcase at The B'ton Coalition on Friday, May 13th. Pictures from the UK show are in this post.

Their next show will take place in Toronto as part of the NXNE Festival to which they were recently added....

NORTH BY NORTHEAST announces the third wave of bands for the 17th edition of the festival, taking over Toronto June 13-19, 2011. Tickets are now available online at www.nxne.com.

NXNE has just confirmed that hardcore heroes FUCKED UP and glam gallant DIAMOND RINGS will join the Yonge-Dundas Square (YDS) line-up that includes previously announced acts such as Devo, Stars, The Pharcyde, Land of Talk, Digable Planets, Descendents, OFF! and Men Without Hats.

Men Without Hats will also play an intimate club show on Thursday, June 16 at The Great Hall in addition to their YDS performance - and Fucked Up headlines the NOW Magazine showcase on the same night, at Wrongbar.

Newly announced as part of the NXNE Music Festival are HANDSOME FURS, previewing tracks from the new album Sound Kapital, GRIMES with her genre-bending pop, retro Manhattan garage-pop stars THE POSTELLES, Los Angeles four-piece SUPERHUMANOIDS, Portland folk outfit HORSE FEATHERS, Pixies tour mates IMAGINARY CITIES, action comic-punk band PEELANDER Z, Nashville garage punks HEAVY CREAM and critically acclaimed one-man band GUARDS.

All dates, more Great Escape pictures, album art and tracklist, and the MP3 below...

Continue reading "Handsome Furs played the Great Escape, added to NXNE, made NSFW cover art, etc (pics, dates & a new MP3)"

by Benjamin Lozovsky

Spoon has made a long and fruitful career out of simultaneously fulfilling and denying the expectations of fans, critics and record labels. On Friday night (3/26), the band greatly exceeded its own expectations by headlining a sold-out Radio City Music Hall.

It was a big deal for a band that's taken small but inquisitive steps over 16 years and 7 records. This show came in support of their latest effort, Transference, a moody yet powerful record of micro-experimentation that ultimately saw the band reinvigorating their inner scruffiness (they celebrated the release of that record by playing a much smaller NYC venue in January). But unlike some recent tour dates which saw Transference heavy setlists, on this night Spoon played a well curated sampling of many of their past gems; it felt like a therapeutic nod to history for a band eager to revisit the moments that brought them this far.

But it wasn't just looking back for the fuzzy feeling of nostalgia. Britt Daniel and co. breathed new sophisticated life into songs like "I Summon You" and "Someone Something." The latter was sung as a duet with Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces, one of several guests (Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Stephen Patterson of White Rabbits) who appeared during the show. Dan and Eleanor performed one of their own songs with the group as well as assisting on Spoon numbers, as the headliner graciously and generously dolloped the trademark Spoon appliqué onto numbers like "Waiting To Know You" and "Modern World."

Radio City Music Hall is often a tough sell for rock fans, and Friday was no exception. It wasn't until midway through Spoon's first set, when the band was augmented by a seven piece horn section for numbers like "Don't You Evah" from their brass heavy 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, that the crowd finally took notice of the scorching effort brought forth by the band members and joined in on the revelry of this potential poster child for indie rock perseverance affixing its name to such an illustrious marquee.

Attempting to warm up the crowd were lively but somewhat underdeveloped The Strange Boys (sans new member Jenna Thornhill-DeWitt) and Deerhunter. Many attendants preferred to mingle in the gold-plated lobby of Radio City rather than check out the openers, but neither band did everything they could to completely win over the crowd either. Deerhunter didn't outright disappoint, but they didn't sound as impactful as normal. For the majority of their performance, the powerful streams of noise normally associated with the band were muted in the large hall. Instead the bare trappings of their songwriting were exposed, which might have been an interesting contrast for a frequent listener, but to the uninitiated came across as listless and at times sluggish. When Bradford Cox and his bandmates played to their more expansive and propulsive leanings though, things improved. They finally turned up the volume and intensity in the finale which was topped off with a long cacophonously exciting outro. Then they seemed to be having fun as eccentric noise makers in such a staid arena.

Still neither of the younger bands could match the passion of the older Spoon, who now might be considered elder statesmen of the genre they often like to eschew connections with. Daniel has an ageless croon, even if it faltered occasionally Friday. One couldn't help but feel Spoon could go on forever taking small steps at musical progression and growth. As a performance though, this was one giant leap.

More tour dates HERE. The full Radio City setlist with more pictures and some videos, below...

Continue reading "Spoon (and Dan Boeckner & Eleanor Friedberger), Deerhunter & the Strange Boys @ Radio City Music Hall - pics & video"

photos by Alex Reside

"the show was AMAZING! i think from my posts on this board it's apparent that i am of the krug persuasion (what can i say, i dig accordions and marimba) but dan may be my new hero, and alexei my heroine. so much energy and audience dance parties galore.

the best part though, the two of them are just so HUMBLE and seemed genuinely honored that so many folks came out to see them. alexei kept putting her hands to her heart as if she couldn't believe where she was...it's just so great to see bands that truly appreciate what they've achieved, and to see audiences having such a good time...everybody wins.

and they are just so fricking CUTE and lovely together. at one point they touched foreheads and gave each other big happy excited faces - it was such an "awwww" moment (who knew dan boeckner was capable of soliciting an "aw?")" [stuntgirl]

That review and the pictures in this post are from the Handsome Furs show at Bowery Ballroom last night (7/8). Tonight (7/9), they do it again with the same openers (Dri and The Cinnamon Band) at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

As stuntgirl pointed out, it was a great show. I completely agree with the humble/appreciation thing. Dan is also so funny and still talking about how NYC, and especially Bowery Ballroom, makes him nervous because of the time in 2005(!) that Wolf Parade played there and the Internet talked about how drunk he was the next day (sorry Dan!). More pictures from last night's show below...

Continue reading "Handsome Furs, Dri & the Cinnamon Band @ Bowery Ballroom - pics "

words & photos by Dominick Mastrangelo

DOWNLOAD: Handsome Furs - I'm Confused (MP3)

The Handsome Furs played to an enthusiastic, sold-out crowd at the Mercury Lounge on Friday. Dancing and even trivia were on order as the Montreal, husband and wife duo of Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry played in support of their upcoming record Face Control (Sub Pop). Boeckner explained that certain label and publicity folks were uneasy with the band selling copies of their new record in advance (it hits streets on March 10.) So, Boeckner and Perry held rounds of trivia between songs to win a copy of the new cd. Question: Who is Wayne Coyne's favorite Montreal band? Correct answer... Arcade Fire.

The Hundred in the Hands and a Kyp Malone-less Iran opened the show. More pictures below...

Continue reading "Handsome Furs, Iran & The Hundred in the Hands @ Mercury Lounge, NYC - pics"

DOWNLOAD: Handsome Furs - What We Had (old MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Handsome Furs - Cannot Get, Started (old MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Swan Lake - All Fires (old MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Swan Lake - The Freedom (old MP3)

FACE CONTROL is the second album by Montreal's Handsome Furs, 2007's Plague Park was their first. Alexei Perry and Dan Boeckner wrote the songs on FACE CONTROL together. The album was recorded and mixed by Arlen Thompson at Mount Zoomer. It was mastered by Harris Newman at Hotel2Tango. It will be released on March 10th, 2009 [by Sub Pop].

That makes two-upcoming Wolf Parade-related albums in March....

The release of SWAN LAKE's new album is imminent! It is called "Enemy Mine", to be released on Jagjaguwar on March 24th, 2009 (March 23rd in the UK).

For those unfamiliar, SWAN LAKE is the musical group featuring celebrated songwriter-mystics Daniel Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade) and Carey Mercer (of Frog Eyes and Blackout Beach).

Together they recorded Enemy Mine, their nine-song second album, in Victoria, British Columbia, in early 2008, a little more than a year after the release of their well-received debut collaboration, "Beast Moans", also on Jagjaguwar.

While their debut album was a beautifully-weaved mash-up of their disparate song-writing styles, often with layer upon layer of various melodies and stylistics thrown into a collaborative cauldron to magical, and at times discordant effect, their second album "Enemy Mine" reflects a more stripped-down, more deliberate approach to collaboration. It's as if they really tried to just make nice songs together. To quote Krug, "There's architecture here." Not that the lyric is about collaboration--it fits nicely though.

It is the band's contention that this is the first known use of a "court painting" as a record cover used in popular music. As a result of this enthusiasm, the band had planned on calling the album "Before the Law", a beloved Kafka parable and a reference to this court painting. However, the band is tired of being tagged as "literary", so they dubbed the record "Enemy Mine", a beloved movie from Bejar's youth, and a good metaphor for collaboration.

Both new album tracklistings, and Handsome Furs tour dates (including SXSW), below...

Continue reading "new Handsome Furs & Swan Lake albums, MP3 & tour dates"

by BrooklynVegan Mike

"For me the most depressing, the worse thing, that has happened with Wolf Parade, is how the media pit me and Spencer against each other."

Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade) @ Terminal 5 (more by Kyle Reinford)

We first spoke with Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade two years ago. He had just had a rough set and a kerfuffle with a mid-90s college act. Last year we caught up with him again - that time with Alexei Perry and we talked Handsome Furs. Another year has passed and the ever prolific Boeckner (and the rest of Wolf Parade) are back with a new record called At Mount Zoomer. We spoke with Dan AGAIN - this time after Wolf Parade's biggest Montreal (August 3rd) show to date (a show that was still smaller than the two NYC shows they played a few days earlier). We talked about the NYC shows, the record, the upcoming Furs record, Fine Young Cannibals, and those persistent Dan/Spencer rivalry questions.

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Before we talk Wolf Parade, I just read online that there is already a title for the new Handsome Furs record?

Continue reading "another interview w/ Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs"